Data-driven brand communication : exploring ways in which storytelling visualization can be used for brand communication

Storytelling is a classic technical approach in the advertising industry that has helped a large number of businesses achieve great success. However, besides the traditional fantasy-story advertising, a lot of data shows that the “scientific data” graphs can increase the persuasiveness of advertising media. With the popularity of information visualization in people’s daily life, there comes an opportunity for visualization designers to tell brand stories by data visualization. Therefore, the objective of this thesis is to explore how storytelling visualization can be used for brand communication. Specifically, this thesis (a) present a taxonomy of storytelling visualizations on different branding communication goals; (b) provide conceptual storytelling frameworks to guide through the design process, in order to make storytelling visualization more reliable and persuasive; (c) demonstrate and discuss the application of storytelling visualization in specific case of brand communication by using Hubway data; (d) discuss the limitations of this technology and the room for improvement.